FIRST, some mood music:

The basic storyline is that Scott Baio, aka Charles In Charge, aka Washed-Up-Sitcom-Star-With-A-Sex-Addiction-And-Reality-Show-On-Resume, posted an unflattering image of the First Lady on his Twitter with a caption that read, “WOW He wakes up to this every morning.” Of course, the mass of activist Twitterers took to the streets with their torches & pitchforks to condemn Baio for his blatant racism.

Activist Twitterers are stupid. Doesn’t the name just give it away? Despite that, Baio’s stupidity probably trumps them all. His response to the outpouring of First Lady support and Baio-condemnation was THIS.

Quote of the Day: “Do I look like I’m racist? This is Renee’s BEST frd. STOP USING THE RACE CARD!!!” – Scott Baio, referring to his wife Renee’s “BEST frd.”

Dear Scott,

No, you are not a racist for posting a heinous pic of the First Lady’s mug. You’re also not a racist for making the pointless and unfunny remark you made beneath it. I understand what’s at work: you’re boring and uninteresting and so you make extremely pedestrian jokes about people to try to act like you’re snarky and hip and relevant. I get it. Can’t hate on you for that.

But the WORST defense in the face of an accusation of racism is to say “I have Black friends! I’m not a racist.” And you took it a step further: that broad ain’t even YOUR friend! She’s your WIFE’s friend!

I have to make an appropriate reference to the unfailing wisdom of Ed Lover: C’mon SON!

Stick to “taking good care of meeeeee, like you’re one of the familyyyyyyy.”

Kthnxbai.

Love,
Naz

From Newser.com:

Scott Baio probably hasn’t had this many people gunning for him since Bugsy Malone. The actor posted a picture of Michelle Obama looking a bit crazed on Twitter yesterday with the comment, “WOW He wakes up to this every morning!” He was soon hit by an avalanche of angry responses, including some from fellow Republicans, E! Online reports.

The former sitcom star—whose number of followers quickly exploded to nearly 5,000—posted screenshots of death threats he had received and warned that the FBI had been contacted. “I am NOT making fun of any1,” Baio tweeted, posting a picture of a black woman he said was his wife’s best friend to counter accusations that he was being racist.

Click here to read more.

For those of you who don’t know, Publishers’ Weekly is a weekly trade magazine for literary agents, book publishers and librarians. In recent years, its primary focus has been book reviews.

All good, so far. This week, the week of December 14, 2009, PW released an issue focused on book reviews and trends in African-American publishing. I mean, why not, right? There’s been a lot going on in the Black literary world recently. Still good.

But here is where things start to unravel. This is the cover that finally made it to print:

As I often feel when these sorts of questionable images end up on covers of magazines, I am bewildered. I mean, I’m a media person. I know how many meetings and discussions happen before anything is solidified in print. We hash things out, we argue about the relevancy, we discuss the appropriateness of any imagery we choose.

Sure, everyone makes mistakes. But sometimes, the mistake can be so obvious that it’s hard to let it slide. This PW cover happens to fall in that category.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I actually feel about it. At first glance, it seems completely offensive and negatively stereotypical. I mean, the only thing missing is Farrakhan in the background. But after polling a few co-workers, it seems some Black people don’t really see anything wrong with it.

So, enlighten me, here: Is a cover like this an example of bad editorial judgment? Or is it really not that big of a deal?

This snafu started one hell of a Twitter controversy, so there must be some weight to it all, no?

WATCH:

Both were contentious issues argued about on the Senate floor; both were issues affecting Black people disproportionately; both freaked White people out enough to have them screaming bloody murder at the mere mention of “federal government.”

Seems like a sound enough argument to me! But wait… could there be a disconcerting undertone to all this? What’s race got to do with healthcare, anyway?

(A lot. You’d want to check this, this & this out to learn more.)

All this is to say that there seems to be a definite & palpable hypothesis the Democratic party is trying to advance: if you’re against healthcare, you’re a racist. And, with a Black president, you certainly don’t wanna be caught with that glove on. Do you?

Seemingly in response to this, there’s a great YouTube campaign going on called, “I Guess I’m A Racist.”

WATCH:

If I’m honest, I stopped caring about healthcare when I realized it’s the “Hope&Change” trojan horse. You know, except it’s filled with crazy-eyed lobbyists that are hell-bent on making sure D.C. continues on the “More Of The Same” bus we all thought we de-boarded on November 4, 2008.

SURPRISE! (?)

But my favorite part of this “I Guess I’m A Racist,” thing is how they cleverly get a couple Black people in there. Like, “Hey, see, it’s a Black person.. against healthcare.. I guess you think this BLACK PERSON is racist toooo, Harry Reid?! *scoff scoff scoff*.” The people behind this video really, truly understand race politics in this country. (GROAN)

What do you think? Is it racist to be against health care reform? Is there a real comparison to be drawn between slavery & health care? Does race even play a role here or is everyone just going nuts?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

From HuffingtonPost.com:

Universal changed “Couples Retreat” marketing material for the film’s UK release, and removed the black actors from both the poster’s photo and the list of stars typed out.

The film, which features four couples who go on vacation together, costars Faizon Love as a divorced man who takes his new girlfriend along, played by Kali Hawk.

Below are the UK (left) and the US (right) poster.

The Mail on Sunday reports:

The studio said it regretted causing offence and has abandoned plans to use the revised poster in other countries… A Universal spokesman said the revised advert aimed ‘to simplify the poster to actors who are most recognisable in international markets’.

Click here to read more.

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Let me rewind and provide some context. Yesterday afternoon, I was casually scrolling through Twitter, checking out people’s tweets and what not, and I came across the Twitter trending topics. It’s a wonderful little nugget nestled on the right rail of the site – a place where you can get a quick glance at what the hottest topics  in the twitter-verse are.

And you know what the NUMBER ONE trending topic was? Guess.. *cue Jeopardy music*

Give up? It was “things darkies say.” Not a joke. People became so inflamed that by the time I refreshed my page to get all the newest tweets in this thread, the topic had been taken off the list. Power of the internet, people.

The thing that’s interesting about this is the vocabulary. Many of the people responding to this meme (which, by the way, you can still search for on twitter) were of 2 types: they were either outraged & offended by the word “darkie” or you were immune to its otherwise vitriolic implications because in South Africa, apparently, “darkie is the same thing as the n-word.” Faulty logic, I know.

But after seeing how much of a hot topic this became on a site accessible to people from around the world, how swiftly the topic was removed after hearing outraged members, and how the “thingsdarkiessay” meme bore an illegitimate child, “SouthAfricansarePissed,” it begs the question: how important are the words that we use to describe each other & others? Is it ok to re appropriate formerly oppressive language for our own benefit, or is that argument a bit passe?

And, perhaps more interestingly, all communities of color have internal vocabulary, things they only say to each other and never around white people: Should we just learn to keep that shit to ourselves?

Remember this, for example?:

Are you any of you on Twitter? Did you witness the #thingsdarkiessay meme? What are your thoughts?

But somehow, MSNBC reporter Contessa Brewer, mistook Rev. Jesse Jackson to be Rev. Al Sharpton. And the Rev didn’t seem to like that…

Woops! The two Rev’s don’t look alike AT ALL, but, let’s give Contessa the benefit of the doubt…..

I might have mistaken her for Campbell Brown.

WATCH the slip-up here:

What do you think about this? Funny? Honest mistake? Speak on it!

RELATED:

JUST CURIOUS: Is It Racist To Hate On The White Miss Hampton?

JUST CURIOUS: Is Blackface Always Racist?

This Miss Hampton controversy has gotten entirely out of hand. But, being a news-chaser myself, I’m hooked.

Here’s the question: What is the big deal about having a white girl win the Miss Hampton beauty contest? After all, there is precedent for this type of non-white representation of a historically Black institution. For example, take Joshua Packwood who in 2008 became the first white Valedictorian of Morehouse College, a well-known and well-respected HBCU.

No one made a stink about THAT. People let that slide. In fact, the event was lauded as an achievement in the long struggle for multi-culturalism and equality. Oh, how the tables had turned, they said! A white boy, a minority among his university peers, had earned the highest academic honor his alma mater had to offer. He rose above the fray. An Obama in reverse!

And yet, here we are, a full year later, reacting in the exact OPPOSITE fashion towards Nikole Churchill, the white girl from Hawaii who managed to be crowned Miss Hampton University in the school’s annual beauty pageant.

Putting my opinion of beauty pageants in general aside, why has there been such an intense visceral reaction, specifically from women, about this? Word on the street is, it’s a slap in the face of all of her Black pageant-mates, each of whom also exhibited beauty, poise and intelligence. Moreover, (and here’s the pesky seed of controversy) they’re all BLACK! At a BLACK institution! Go figure. It seems that in this gnarly world of HBCU amateur beauty pageantry, being Black is an ultimate pre-requisite to winning the … plastic tiara.

Sure, there are no real rules prohibiting Ms. Churchill from entering but the prevailing opinion seems to be that letting her run is just so the Pageant board can appear welcoming of their non-Black fellow students. As one observer who attended a different HBCU said, “They should have just picked the girl they believed to be #2. Because SHE was Black.”

Hmm. This seems chock full of nuts, don’t it?

The biggest difference between the victories of Joshua Packwood at Morehouse and Nikole Churchill at Hampton, the two “subjugated minorities” on their respective campuses, seems to be the fact that Packwood’s success was based on empirical, objective data. It was his GPA, purely, that earned him the honor of becoming valedictorian. For Churchill, it was the subjective opinion of a panel of judges, that apparently ultimately decided she was the “fairest of them all.” Pun TOTALLY intended.

So what do you think? Is it racist to feel a white girl shouldn’t win a beauty pageant at an HBCU simply because she isn’t Black? In that case, should HBCU’s be admitting non-Black students at all? Where do we draw the line here?

Also, why the hell are colleges and universities even HOSTING these events? This is high-school-grade one-upmanship at its finest. These HBCUs began as institutions meant to uplift and empower African-Americans with a quality education, as many of the most astute BP members pointed out. So why are events such as these so huge? How do they become so politically charged? Why don’t HBCUs feel empowered and PROUD that the quality of the education they provide has attracted people from every walk of life, every race? That somehow, over the course of time, these historically Black institutions are no longer relegated to the fringe of prestigious American education; that they are now counted among the most competitive institutions in our nation and that they produce some of the most sought-after talent. Shouldn’t they be cheering and jumping for joy that they have become the beacons of diversity and opportunity that they originally sought to be?

The race card, while often played brilliantly and with good reason, in this case seems to fall short. This whole Miss Hampton controversy really reverses the camera lens and focuses it right back onto the community of nay-sayers who have to confront their OWN racial biases.

Just because you have been historically subjugated and now attend a historically Black college or university that celebrates your particular history, does not entitle you to REPEAT said history.

Just sayin’.

So to answer the above posed question: Is it racist to hate on the white Miss Hampton? It sure as hell is.

I came into the office this morning and had this video sitting, innocently, in my inbox:

At first glance, there’s nothing particularly curious about it. It’s blatantly racist. 5 guys in blackface, dancing around minstrel-style to some Jackson Five lyrics. This isn’t anything new, but perhaps moreso than in cultures across the planet, the United States has implicitly outlawed such “buffoonery.” What can pass as cheaply humorous in Australia is downright unacceptable here in the U.S.A. We, as a society, have unanimously decided that when white men paint their faces black in order to “entertain,” it is always in poor taste and is never actually funny.

…Or is it? Even Harry Connick, Jr., a judge on the above show who voiced his offense at the end of the clip, had his very own blackface-moment on Mad TV:

Sure, his black-face isn’t that, well… Black. But, the inflection is on point. No surprise either since Connick, Jr. was brought up in New Orleans and leans heavy on jazz culture. So, is it acceptable for a white actor to successfully play a Black character? Is it only okay for a serious role and not for a comedic one that could be confused as being antagonistic?

How about when roles are reversed? Is it never entertaining when a Black actor plays a white person, a la Eddie Murphy on his Delirious comedy tape?:

You’re laughing, aren’t you? Stop lyin!

And what about all those Obama impersonators out there, the most famous of which isn’t even Black! (Fred Armisen on SNL.) He’s not Black but he plays a Black man – not just ANY Black man, but the Black President of the United States! And it’s totally not funny! YET, no one raises concerns about his blackface. Have you seen AlphaCat? Much much funnier:

So is the degree of offense taken based on the actual comedic quality of the blackface impersonation? Or is blackface just ALWAYS out of line? And if blackface is ALWAYS out of line, should Whiteface be outlawed as well? Where do we draw the line on this?

As you ponder these questions, I leave you with one of the most disturbing and, yet, most brilliantly executed blackface moments of contemporary film. HAHA!:

From HuffingtonPost.com:

The NRA is taking aim at Mayor Bloomberg, New Yorkers, and apparently the mafia (who one would think would be some of the gun rights group’s biggest supporters) in new television ads airing in Virginia.

In the commercial supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, an actor whose “mob” accent sounds closer to Hugh Grant in Mickey Blue Eyes (if you haven’t seen the film, it’s about as good as you imagine) than a local wiseguy, explains to Virginia voters that it would be in their best interest not to vote for McDonnell if they “know what’s good” for them.

This whole re-evaluation got me thinking about these advertisements as art. I mean, art directors design them, right? And art & creativity is involved at all levels of executing a semi-offensive campaign of any kind, right? If it makes it to the airwaves, the magazines or the interwebs, chances are someone along the line thought it could pass, right?

That brought me to this very interesting question: Is it okay for art to be racist? When is something racist and when is it actually purposeful and subversive?

You see, I’m a design-nut and I troll the web’s endless array of design, art & craft blogs. During one of these forays, I came across a rather interesting wall-treatment company who does some very … strange things with wallpaper.

At first glance, this looks like regular wall-paper right? Vintage, a little like grandma’s house, totally innocuous, right?:

Look a little closer, however:

HMMMM. Well, isn’t that clever? Hiding a totally anachronistic image of misrepresented current realities in a wall-scape that, in general, evokes a very antithetical feeling: the comfort & security of grandma’s house. The thing is, this might be acceptable if it were an intelligent commentary on the state of race relations in this country and in this world. But I doubt it. I think it’s really meant to just be a “funny” conversation starter in some random person’s living room.
Just imagine yourself seated around a vintage cherry-wood dining table, nibbling away at your walnut & cranberry salad. A guest notices the hidden image and all of a sudden, you’re all laughing and joking about its irony and hilarity. Somehow, this would just make me weirdly uncomfortable.

Can it pass because it’s “art” and therefore belongs to a category of expression not really open to the type of criticism I apply to advertisements? Am I just crazy for thinking this is a really weird thing to have on your wall? Not to mention the fact that the image represents race in THE most stereotypical and negative way: “big scary Black guy” aiming a gun at a slight, scared white woman. Great.

Maybe if this art was more powerfully subversive the way Kara Walker’s work (see below) is, I’d feel a little more compelled to cut this artist slack:

What do you think?

Just curious..

I know, I know. My job is serious – seriously dangerous. I’m currently blogging from Afghanistan, in the war-torn ruins of ancient cities, trying as I might to find some peace in this, hell on earth. Lucky for me, I’ve come prepared: I’ve got the LAPTOP BURKA!!

…..Just kidding. But really, if I were, I’d definitely put this product on the company tab. After all, it’s only right that I am allowed to blog “in a glare-free, psychologically separate space.” Note the double entendre: “glare,” as in annoying & distracting reflection of light on a computer screen and “glare,” as in the pathological and psychologically troublesome, Freudian ‘glare’ of men towards women which consciously & unconsciously sexualizes females and contributes to all the social ills on this planet. Clever, no?

Anyway, while this “Laptop Burka” might have SOME (however obscure) redeemable usability, naming it the “Laptop Burka” probably means that the geeks responsible for this massive slip-up spend more time in their “portable private space” than out in the real-world.

Perhaps a better name would be the “Loser Cocoon.”

What do you think?

NB: Check out the comments in the link. The makers of said “Laptop Burka” have responded with a justification… groan.

Some people wonder where I get my material for this column. Frankly, it’s not that difficult.

This winner comes to us from Harlem, New York City. NEW YORK CITY!!! And what’s worse? This soda isn’t stocked in some obscure, back-alley corner shop. Oh no. It’s in… TARGET!

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, PEOPLE?!

Am I crazy for thinking THIS is crazy? Speak on it.

Have you heard the news? If you’ve got any plans to drive down Desolation Row, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan might help guide your way. Dylan is set to voice a GPS system and companies are currently bidding to be his host.

Naturally, this got us thinking about similarly unmistakable black voices of yore, and what it might be like to have them telling you to turn left: voices like Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, James Earl Jones and….. DeLexus Hennessy.

Yes, you read right. In an inexplicable campaign by Garmin, leading manufacturer of in-car navigation systems, a custom character has been created to lead you to your destination. DeLexus is just your average “loveable ghetto fabulous street queen,” who promises you sass, street smarts and terrible enunciation, ie “Turn lef’”.

I can’t begin to imagine the amount of sheer, unbridled, astronomical stupidity it requires to come up with something quite this idiotic and distasteful. This, too, from an otherwise well-known, nearly household name, Garmin. But, alas… This is America, land of opportunity.

CLICK HERE to play the sample. Try to contain your rage as she opens with, “Wasssuuuppppp??!!! You clicked on me?!”

If you like this product, you’re in luck: it also comes in a spicy Latin flavor.

What do you think?

…If you’re the father of the poor innocent child who was randomly kicked by the kid with Down’s, then… umm.. maybe?

Said differently, violence is never the answer. Have we learned nothing from the squawking screed we all endured after Will.I.Am (or his manager…) allegedly decked Perez Hilton??! I think he counts among the mentally challenged.

But I digress. That father’s reaction was WAY too fast. Should he have at least given himself a chance to properly assess the situation before beating the kid’s face into the cheap linoleum? Should he have spoken to his mother first?

Although, if he had taken the appropriate precautions before beating the lights outta the Downs Syndrome-having teenager, he might not have hit him and we wouldn’t be sitting here reveling in the hilarity of other people’s anguish… *le sigh*

What do you think?

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Many readers of NewsOne and Just Curious complain that, often, we are fear-mongering; that, somehow, by bringing attention to things that are curiously offensive, we are further entrenching ourselves in the stereotypes that hold our communities back.

I wonder what some of you have to say about this story. This type of racism is an ugly vestige of things that many of you think we’ve somehow transcended because we put a Black man in office. Such is not the case, clearly.

To be sure, it is NOT the attention we bring to stories like these that is holding us back. It is the reality of the stories themselves.

Take a look. And let me hear your thoughts.

From NYTimes.com:

About now, high-school seniors everywhere slip into a glorious sort of limbo. Waiting out the final weeks of the school year, they begin rightfully to revel in the shared thrill of moving on. It is no different in south-central Georgia’s Montgomery County, made up of a few small towns set between fields of wire grass and sweet onion. The music is turned up. Homework languishes. The future looms large. But for the 54 students in the class of 2009 at Montgomery County High School, so, too, does the past. On May 1 – a balmy Friday evening – the white students held their senior prom.

And the following night – a balmy Saturday – the black students had theirs.

Click here for the full story.

CLICK HERE for more on this story.

Look, I’m gonna plead the 5th on what I think about marijuana use but something about this new symbol of global cooperation and community seems WHOLLY appropriate. *wink wink*

Sound off in the comments!

STILL CURIOUS? Satisfy your appetite here.

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Among his many failings since he was appointed to be the head of the RNC, his biggest may be the humiliation and confusion he has caused for the whole identity-building exercise he was hired to resolve. The GOP, in their naive and misguided attempt to appeal to the new America under President Obama, thought making a Black man the face of the party would help them gain some traction with the public.

Unfortunately, their plan backfired. It’s kind of hard to be the face of the party when the unofficial party-head is a crazed radio talk-show host…. *ahem*

NewsOne is working to expose the Republican Party for what it is: a bunch of old dogs who are completely out of touch and fumbling to survive in these dynamic and desperate times.

Michael Steele, we’re not too distracted by Limbaugh and Jindal. We’ve got our eye on you too!

LATEST UPDATES:

Steele: “I’ll Empathize Right On Your Behind” & Why He Should Never Speak | CLICK HERE

Steele To GOP: “We Lost Our Minds”

Michael Steele Didn’t Read The Constitution | CLICK HERE

Stephen Colbert Battle Raps Michael Steele | CLICK HERE

Steele Redecorates Office With Scarce RNC Funds | CLICK HERE

How Steele Can Get His Groove Back | CLICK HERE

Steele Takes Back “Choice” Comment, Claims To Be Pro-Life | CLICK HERE

Steele Says Abortion Is An “Individual Choice” | CLICK HERE

Steele Mocks Obama’s Bipartisanship, “A Fiction Of Politics” | CLICK HERE

D.L. Hughley Disses Michael Steele | CLICK HERE

Michael Steele Raps! | CLICK HERE

Steele Gets Dissed On Morning Joe | CLICK HERE

GOP Tells Steele To Shuttup Or Get Fired | CLICK HERE

Michael Steele Calls Rush Limbaugh “Ugly, Incendiary” | CLICK HERE

Stephen Colbert Wants To Battle Michael Steele | CLICK HERE

Man Of Steele: Is Steele Barack Obama’s Evil Twin? | CLICK HERE

Is Michael Steele A Radical Black Racist? | CLICK HERE

Michael Steele Is Named RNC Chairman | CLICK HERE

The New York chapter of the Council For American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is hosting their annual banquet and fundraiser this Saturday, May 9th at Vanderbilt Hall of the NYU Law School. If you are in the New York City area this weekend, try to check it out!

The keynote speaker, Hatem Bazian, is actually a distinguished Palestinian-American scholar whose work focuses on a topic that has been of immediate relevancy since the late 60s: relations between Israel and Palestine. He was born in the West Bank, amid the conflict, and has been celebrated for his unique approach to scholarship: he is often referred to as an organic intellectual, relating his work more directly the people that it involves rather than speculation alone.

While there is some level of controversy surrounding him, as is expected when your focused research is about such a controversial topic, and he has been referred to as an anti-Semite, this makes it even more interesting to be in his presence to hear his thoughts on the subject.

The other talent that will be featured goes far to showcase the multi-talented and diverse community of professionals that makes up the American-Muslim constituency in this country. Comedian Aron Kader and spoken word artist, Gaith Adhami, will also be in attendance.

Get your tickets now and support minority community efforts in the Metropolitan area! Check the flyer for more info.

WATCH Hatem Bazian speak about Islam & Women:

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After the recent exposure of Domino’s not-so-sanitary food preparation tactics, I’ve boycotted the establishment altogether.

But I couldn’t pass up on this cutesie but odd commercial for Domino’s Pasta. They were clearly riding on the heels of their main competitor, Pizza Hut, who also launched a pasta menu. The commercial, featuring a rapping, hip-hoppin piece of penne, was at once hilarious and pointless. No wonder it got pulled from TV.

Are you a “pasta playa-hata”? Share in the comments!

Booger-Picking Domino’s Workers Face Felony Charges

WATCH the video here:
Dominos Pasta DUDE!

STILL CURIOUS? Satisfy your need to debate here.

Unlike the commercial for “Jones’ Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage”, THIS commercial is, indeed, real. And for all those people out there thinking I’m just crying wolf all the time, the makers of this ad actually ACKNOWLEDGE the curiously racist, rather, racialized, images they portray. The following was included in the description of this video on their YouTube page:

To address the controversy around this video: We knew this video was going to be controversial. Anytime race is discussed in any capacity, controversy ensues. The racial reconciliation concept was a joint effort between the Red House staff and us. They pointed out the fact that their employees and customer base were like the “Rainbow Coalition”, and we thought something with a comical racial reconciliation theme would be fun, as well as a conversation starter.

For those of you who think this video is racist, we’d like you to distinguish between “racist” and “racial”. Racism is “hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.” Racial is “of, relating to, or based on a race”. This video is very obviously racial as opposed to racist. This video doesn’t promote or feature hatred or intolerance. Rather, it’s the very opposite. This commercial promotes inclusion and reconciliation, if not in a comical way. To point out the obvious, the irony in this video is that it’s completely ridiculous for people to relate furniture to their race. People of all colors are welcome at the Red House, which is something that is taken for granted today, but there was a time in the not-so-recent past during which things as simple as a water fountain were NOT for everyone.

Discussing race in the US is taboo. It always makes people feel uncomfortable. We think it’s a shame that someone saying “I’m white” or “I’m black” creates such a stir. There are real cultural identities within different people groups, and these things should be celebrated and embraced, not swept under the rug.

This video is an attempt to use humor to spark a discussion about race issues, because we still have a long way to go.

Is that a sufficient explanation? What do YOU think? Let me know in the comments!

STILL CURIOUS? Check more out here:

JUST CURIOUS LOOP

So they’re trying to fake us out. First, it was Sarah Palin’s nomination to run alongside John McCain in 08, in an effort to capture disgruntled Hillary voters. We were supposed to think the GOP was down with women. (Not.)

Then, after the Democrats put a Black man in the Oval Office, the GOP thought to itself, “There’s a bandwagon to jump on. Post-racial America, HERE WE COME!” Hence, the appointment of Michael Steele as chairman of the RNC. Hip-Hop makeover? Really?

And now, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, has become the latest iteration of this tired philosophy: When in doubt, put a Brown dude out. As Baratunde from Jack&Jill Politics described, Jindal sounded like a Muppet.

Well, we here at NewsOne figured if the GOP could cash in on Jindal’s face, so could we. We’ve got our eye on you, Governor…..

LATEST UPDATES:

Jindal Spares Money For New Orleans Saints, But Slashes Health & Education Funding | CLICK HERE

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Meghan McCain Interviews Bobby Jindal’s Wife, Supriya | CLICK HERE

Volcano Erupts In Alaska Weeks After Jindal Mocks Volcano Monitoring | CLICK HERE

Jindal Talks About Taking Stimulus Money | CLICK HERE

Jindal’s Kenneth Problem | CLICK HERE

Jindal’s Approval Rating At 15% | CLICK HERE

Jindal: I’m Glad Steele Apologized To Rush | CLICK HERE

WATCH THE VIDEO:

Oh, They Lie!… Again | CLICK HERE

Jindal Admits His Katrina Story Is False | CLICK HERE

Kenneth the Page likes ante-bellum architecture too | CLICK HERE

Gov. Jindal, can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street? | CLICK HERE

Jindal: Jazzercise? NO! EXORCISE! | CLICK HERE

Top 10 Reasons Bobby Jindal is NOT the Next Barack Obama | CLICK HERE

Bobby Jindal Does Fraggle Rock | CLICK HERE

Look. I work the daily news grind for a living so I definitely understand the need for a little irreverence every now and then. It can be refreshing to put together a funny, light-hearted piece of content. Hell, I’ll even settle for just some straight-up feel good news some days.

But CNN…….. I’m hot with embarassment over your latest effort to connect to an audience that has only become relevant to you since the election of a Black president.

But you know what, I’m not even going to do my usual rail on this video…

YOU look at yourself and let me know what you think about this ridiculousness.

WATCH IT HERE:

**Listen carefully for the soundtrack to the segment – T.I. & Jay-Z’s “Swagga Like Us”. Can you say WOOOOOOOWWWW???***

CLICK HERE for the post on HuffingtonPost.com with the full intro.

STILL CURIOUS? CHECK THESE OUT:

JUST CURIOUS: Chicago Serves Ribs & Rubs. Really?

JUST CURIOUS: I Like SquareButts, And I Cannot Lie

JUST CURIOUS: Can You Spot The Racism?

JUST CURIOUS: What Do You Think About The New Old Navy Commercial?

JUST CURIOUS: Obama Ice Cream, Black In White?

A colleague forwarded me the following video, which is apparently a local ad for “Jones’ Good Ass BBQ & Foot Massage.” Despite the fact that this commercial stars a Black business owner (a definite positive image), I can’t help but feel a little creeped out by the honey mustard being poured over an anonymous chicken-n-foot-massage patron’s feet. Is this for real?!

One word: NARSty.

Check it out, let me know what you think.

UPDATE: I called the number in the ad, and it is, indeed, a legitimate business. I couldn’t leave a message since, not surprisingly, the mailbox was full. The shop is apparently located in South Side Chicago (my former home!!) at 119th & Cicero.

Any BP Members from Chicago, have you ever been here for some ribs & rubs??

STILL CURIOUS? Check these out:

JUST CURIOUS: I Like SquareButts, And I Cannot Lie

JUST CURIOUS: Can You Spot The Racism?

JUST CURIOUS: What Do You Think About The New Old Navy Commercial?

JUST CURIOUS: Obama Ice Cream, Black In White?

In my short time as “racist-commercial czar” here at NewsOne, I’ve learned quite a lot about the sensitivities of minorities. Being a woman of color, I represent some of the most marginalized minority groups myself: namely, women and immigrants.

Before I get into my latest exploration of the possible inappropriateness of a new Burger King commercial, I’d like to provide some caveats and disclaimers. I’ve received quite a bit of negativity with regard to this series. I think I’ve been misunderstood. The fact of the matter is that, actually, I don’t jump on the “THIS IS RACIST” bandwagon very often. I tend to give advertisers the benefit of the doubt because, at the end of the day, they’re trying to make a living like the rest of us. And if their target audience is, for example, the African American community, sometimes their unfortunate ignorance leads them to pitch commercial ideas that border on indecent and offensive (if not blatantly so). It’s a symptom of several larger issues, among them: not enough African-Americans in advertising, the isolation/ghettoization/demonization of African Americans in this country, the cultural warfare between the educated elite and the uneducated poor, etc.

That said, I am not naive. I think it is dangerous to assume there are no hidden meanings behind the images and messages we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Advertisers and copy-writers are among the most savvy and clever among us.

So, allow this to be the mission statement of the JUST CURIOUS franchise: I present a questionable image or video. You respond. That is not to say I always think the ad is racist/sexist. Sometimes I don’t. I’m…. JUST CURIOUS.

Anyway, the latest thing up the pike is the following Burger King commercial. They teamed up with legend Sir Mix-A-Lot and SpongeBob SquarePants to come up with this:

All Hip Hop reports:

“We wonder why a children’s television station like Nickelodeon would want to link one of its most popular and profitable characters to this sort of lechery and objectification of women,” the CCFC letter reads. “That’s why we are asking if you approved the use of SpongeBob in this commercial (and the longer Internet viral video, which is frankly even more disturbing).”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE. Let me know what you think!

STILL CURIOUS? Check these out:

JUST CURIOUS: Can You Spot The Racism?

JUST CURIOUS: What Do You Think About The New Old Navy Commercial?

JUST CURIOUS: Obama Ice Cream, Black In White?

From HuffPo:

Kal Penn is leaving the show “House” to work in the White House (or at least, in the Old Executive Office building next door). The actor, best known for his role in “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle,” tells Entertainment Weekly :

I understand it was your decision to leave House. True?
KAL PENN: Yes. I was incredibly honored a couple of months ago to get the opportunity to go work in the White House. I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I’m going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It’s similar to what I was doing on the campaign.

Click here for the full report.

I definitely didn’t need any more reasons to love President Obama, but I am definitely a little tickled after watching the following video. Of all the reporters he could have chosen, he chose an Indian reporter from the Times of India and teased her, causing the entire room to erupt in laughter.

Gotta love him!

WATCH the funny:

This is my new job, apparently. Racist commercial watch. HA! Well, check this one out.

Life’s a bush and when things get hairy, you should… err… mow the lawn?

Let me know if you can spot the racial undertone! BEWARE, it’s veeerrrryyy subtle. Only a trained eye will catch it. Can you?

Leave a comment telling me what you think!

[Hat Tip: Janee at The Urban Daily]

CHECK OUT THE JUST CURIOUS SERIES!

JUST CURIOUS: Obama Ice Cream, Black In White?

JUST CURIOUS: Is Old Navy Racist?

WATCH the commercial here:

Last night, this commercial appeared during the broadcast of American Idol on Fox 5. We, here at the office, have all had mixed reactions.

What do you think? Is it racist? Should we be offended? Just curious…

CHECK OUT MY OPINION BELOW!!!!

WATCH it here:

Ok, so I don’t ACTUALLY think this Old Navy commercial is racist. But let’s just pick this apart for a moment.

All this talk about us being a post-racial society now that we have a Black president is clearly a load of BS. Everyone knows it. Obviously, it’s a major step in the right direction that we were able to elect Barack Obama to the presidency. But our work is not done. In fact, it’s only really just begun, as the prez never fails to remind us.

That said, the racist, black-white society we live in has trained us (by “us” I mean all people who are not white) to be a little skeptical. When it remains in the recent collective memory that Black folks couldn’t vote, couldn’t ride in the front of the bus, and couldn’t drink at the same water fountains as white people, it’s sort of expected no? When your own government, the same government who exploited and abused you and was now institutionalizing the discriminatory practices that STILL AFFECT US TODAY, and remains hostile towards you for generations, it’s hard not to give a side-eye to things like an otherwise benign Old Navy commercial.

Yea, it’s obnoxious and counterproductive to cry “RACE” every time something like this makes an appearance. Buying into what has become a profitable enterprise for most major media outlets, stoking public outrage, is useless and not at all revolutionary. I hear you, BlackPlanet.

But honestly, a naked Black female mannequin?

Among the many vitriolic stereotypes leveraged against the African-American community, one of the most incendiary has been the hypersexualization of Black men and women. Black men are always portrayed as the savage, sexually-superior antithesis to all things decent about white men. Black women are thought of as subhuman, irresponsible, and promiscuous. This is not MY opinion, bear in mind. There is a well-documented historical context to these assumptions. Why do you think one of the most infamous cases coming out of the Post-Reconstruction South was the Scottsboro case, where eight young Black males were accused of gang-raping two white women? Of course, after over 40 years of controversy, the truth was finally revealed that the women made up the whole accusation. It was precisely that deep-seated notion that Black men and women were capable of such lewd and sexual crimes, the idea that it was in their nature to be so oversexualized that a crime like this could not be put past them, that forced these men to wear the Scarlet letter for most of their adult lives.

So when a Black woman sees a mannequin meant to resemble her, from the hairstyle to skin color, to the twangy regional dialect, it’s hard to separate the mannequin from what it represents. It becomes difficult to understand why she is stripped of her clothing and left standing there with her “plastic” unmentionables censored. It just seems a little unnecessary doesn’t it? Why even go there?

Additionally, the bizarre way in which the white man and barking dog respond to the suddenly naked wife and mother raises an eyebrow. How interestingly cryptic that the “predator” is now the white man and the Black man is trying to protect his wife from his roving eye. This smacks of a “Black body as spectacle” mentality, something we used to see a lot more of when the Negritude movement was all the rage, which then influenced the Harlem Renaissance, etc.

Anyway, my bottomline here is that, while I personally am not going to read too much into this commercial, I can understand completely why Black women viewing this ad might feel at best, uncomfortable, and at worst, outraged.

What are your thoughts? Are you offended? Or are you now suddenly craving a cold, sweet treat?

CLICK HERE for the full post on HuffingtonPost.com.

Speak on it, BlackPlanet!

The Republican party is like a 14 year old right now: smelling strange, awkward and confused about what to do with that peach fuzz on its upper lip. The current GOP is trapped in an identity crisis to rival all others and after the monumental failure and embarrassment of, generally, the 2008 McCain campaign and, particularly, Sarah Palin, it comes as no surprise that this flailing value-less party is searching desperately for a Messiah.

As if Michael Steele’s ill-conceived “hip hop” makeover wasn’t bad enough. Now you guys throw poor Kenneth Bobby up there to rebut the Stimulus Package… Here are the top 10 reasons Gov. of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, can’t light a candle to his opening act, Barack Obama:

10. Whereas Barack Obama reclaimed his birth name, and thus his primordial identity, after being called Barry for much of his youth, Bobby Jindal rejected his birth name, Piyush, opting instead to go by “Bobby”, after Bobby Brady.

…Uhh, deep thoughts… (WTF?!)

9. Bobby Jindal = Kenneth Parcell; Barack Obama = Superman. ‘Nuff said.

8. Jindal’s delivery…. sucks. Barack Obama’s NEVER does.

Jindal’s BAD national debut here.

7. David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times doesn’t even like Jindal. And that’s pretty sad. Brooks described Jindal’s debut as “a disaster for the Republican party.”

6. Jaise Uncle Tom tha, vaise Bobby Jindal gorey Republican ka chamcha hai, nahmean? Ha!

5. Despite receiving a degree in Biology from Brown, Jindal is still a proponent of teaching “intelligent design” in schools. Go figure.

4. Barack Obama declared America a nation that  “does not torture” last night. But did you know that Bobby Jindal signed a bill authorizing the chemical castration of those convicted of certain sex offenses? Ouch.

3. He’s a poser. After publicly opposing President Obama’s Stimulus package and defiantly refusing the $3.8B that was coming to Louisiana, he quietly turned down $98 million and took the rest: $3.7 Billion. Way to take a stand.

2. Where Obama made, and continues to make, serious and game-changing efforts to transcend race, Bobby Jindal is the latest pawn in the Republican Party’s thinly veiled attempt at leveraging identity politics in an otherwise indentity-devoid post-election GOP. (read: Sarah Palin)

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON BOBBY JINDAL AIN’T NO BARACK.. ::drumroll please::

1. Barack Obama met his wife at a law firm in Chicago. Bobby Jindal may have met his wife at her exorcism.

CLICK HERE for footage of Gov. Jindal’s Republican response to President Obama’s Address.